Glass Mountain

A digital reprint of Donald Barthelme's Glass Mountain—as printed in City Life (1978), published by Pocket Books—hosted on librarian Jessamyn West's website as part of a larger personal repository dedicated to the author and his work. All creative works were collated and published with permission from Frederick Barthelme, Donald's brother.

Official story blurb:

A glass mountain sits in the middle of a city and at the top sits a 'beautiful, enchanted symbol'. Seeking to disenchant it, the narrator must climb the mountain. Confronted by the jeers of acquaintances, the bodies of previous climbers and the claws of a guarding eagle he, slowly, begins to ascend. In true postmodernist form, subject and purpose collide as Donald Barthelme uses one-hundred fragmented statements to destabilise a symbol of his own - literature's conventional forms and practices. With a quest, a princess and an array of knights, Barthelme subverts that most traditional of genres, the fairy-tale; irony, absurdity, and playful self-reflexivity are the champions of this short story.